Another piece of wonderful stuff from Jonathan Harris

I’ve loved everything I’ve seen from Jonathan Harris. So I was delighted to find another nugget of goodness from him today. It’s called ‘Universe’. It’s based on constellations in the night sky – but instead of showing join-the-dots images of ancient Greek myths, it does the same with today’s news. It’s a fantastic way of navigating big news stories and seeing how they relate. Switch off all the lights and gaze in wonder here:

Why would you expect profound insight from the citizen-journalist model? The wisdom of crowds is a happy-clappy, hippy myth.

wefeelfine.org sums it up perfectly. This is digital democracy in action for you: style over substance; amateurism over expertise; opinion over fact; feeling over reason.

As usual, The Simpsons managed to sum it up perfectly. In Fraudcast News, Mr Burns buys up all the newspapers in town to control his image. But Lisa starts her own, and soon inspires many of the residents of Springfield to do the same. “See Lisa,” observes Homer, “instead of one big-shot controlling all the media, now there’s a thousand freaks Xeroxing their worthless opinions.”

The last communication revolution – the printing press – led to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific advances that have helped us lead the longest, safest, healthiest lives in human history. The digital communication revolution, I fear, seems to be heading us straight back into the dark ages.